At the push of a button : the utopian futures of computer-aided everyday life

ATKINSON, Paul
(2016).
At the push of a button : the utopian futures of computer-aided everyday life.
In: “How We Live, and How we Might Live": Design and the Spirit of Critical Utopianism. The DHS Annual Conference 2015, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, September 11-13th, 2015.
(Unpublished)

Abstract

The introduction of the electronic computer brought with it a utopian vision of how everyday life would be affected for the better. Popular culture from the 1950s to the 1970s was awash with visions of a healthier, wealthier society, enabled by computers. We would work three hours a day, three days a week, and eat meals planned by computer, ordered by push button and cooked within seconds.
This paper will showcase the ways in which computers were presented as an unproblematic solution to so many ills. While many of the future forecasts did in fact appear, others, evidently, did not.